Advanced Professional Responsibility Topics

This course will consider two kinds of problems in Professional Responsibility: new and developing issues whose resolution is difficult to determine under established rules; and age-old and recurring situations in which smart and well-intentioned people find themselves either caught between serious but opposing values and must determine the “right” thing to do, or having dramatically departed from proper conduct in ways that seem obvious only in retrospect. Drawing on the basic understanding of lawyers’ duties from the required survey course in Professional Responsibility, we will consider complex clashes in values involving the rules dictating what is legally permitted or required, as well as considerations of conscience, justice or the welfare of others outside the attorney-client relationship. We will also consider the kinds of forces that can divert lawyers’ attention from their “ethical compass,” or make it seem to spin uselessly, just when it is needed most. We will explore the practical forces that lead to and flow from the interplay among the interests of the various constituencies lawyers are allowed or expected to serve.